Need to understand Shanti Bhushan's anger: Yadav

It is sad that senior Aam Aadmi Party leader Shanti Bhushan had to question the organising skills of chief Arvind Kejriwal in public, but we need to understand what drove him, their colleague Yogendra Yadav has said.

It is sad that senior Aam Aadmi Party leader Shanti Bhushan had to question the organising skills of chief Arvind Kejriwal in public, but we need to understand what drove him, their colleague Yogendra Yadav has said.

Bhushan, one of AAP’s founding members, who sees a lack of internal democracy in the party, commented on Wednesday that Kejriwal didn’t have it in him to turn the young party into a national force. Reacting to it, Yadav said he did felt sad that Bhushan had failed to keep the issue within the party but “he had no motive to damage the party”. “We need to understand why someone like him chose to go public,” he added.

Referring to Bhushan as “a respected member of the party and a source of inspiration”, Yadav said: “His opinion is important to the party.” The leader was in Patiala on Thursday to canvass for AAP candidate Harjit Singh Adalatiwala in the assembly byelection campaign.

“When I questioned the decision-making process in the party, I wrote to Arvind in confidence, but the letter got leaked. I never made a public statement,” Yadav claimed, adding: “A debate on internal democracy can happen only in the AAP. The other parties don’t even discuss it.”

He argued that every party needed constant internal-democracy vigilance. “I am surely going to meet Bhushan-ji and talk to him about his reasons to go public. It is not something you except,” he further said.

Coming to the byelections, he feared rigging by both Akalis and the Congress, who have deployed their legislators and ministers in the city. “We have requested the election commission to forbid outsiders from the constituencies around the voting day on August 21,” said the AAP leader.